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Can any movement have an application

with the way things are with lots of people creating other forms for martial arts for competiton and those forms becoming more and more a test of athlectic ability and not for application. Have some arts stepped too far s that the movements in the forms have become useless? or can they always be altered slightly to make them have a viable application.

I am talking mainly about some of the more flashy kata/forms demos that involves alot of high kicks and jumps, these epople as far as i can see wave their hands around inbetween flashiness. on seeing these there are a lot of things that ight look ike low blocks but with no power and no real stance, does this movement (with power and intention added) still have some purpose, if so what about other moves, maybe movemovements that involve sticking your hands out in all manner of directions. can you always find a real reason for these?

I’d say that if a movement was purposefully designed to be flamboyant and not functional then it would be a waste of time to look for the functional within that flamboyance. It’s always a matter of knowing what we are training for. If a form has been specifically created to win a certain kind of tournament or to display / develop gymnastic ability (i.e. leaping, flipping, etc) then we should it should be used for that purpose. Conversely, the traditional kata were designed to be pragmatic so that is how they should be approached.

I think it was Bill Wallace (I could be wrong?) who said that if an old master saw a modern display form his likely response would be, “OK, I’ll wait for you to finish back flipping and then I’ll tear your face off”. Obviously said to be humorous, but I think the sentiment stands.